A good bilingual dictionary serves as an extremely useful tool for people who interact in at increasingly global workplace. I recently published a bilingual legal terminology dictionary. As a professional translator, I had to render an excellent reference to dictionary users, including Latin American terms. Being familiar with the cultural and legal-bound semantic fields of terms, law dictionaries made in Spain are not always useful given differences determined by the American context.

As an experienced translator, I collected more than forty-four thousand legal terms and phrases for a comprehensive bilingual dictionary. When using this reference, the user always has to consider the contexts and the meanings in the different branches of law.

Knowledge of comparative law in both English and Spanish and my work made me sensitive to the semantic fields of words. Thus, it is often difficult to find consistency in, for example, the legislation in different Latin American countries versus legislation in English-speaking countries. In other words, semantic differences are also observed in the different rules, codes, laws, regulations, etc. in Latin America, the United States, and other countries.

Yet, globalization forces us to seek the best and most appropriate terms to perfect legal instruments in different countries. For example, globalization is translated into Spanish as ‘mundialización, internacionalización, globalización,’ as shown in this dictionary. However, every country has its particular preferred terms referring to the same concept.

In Spain there exists a tendency to continue using Castilian Spanish, whereas in Latin America the influence of the legal terms used in places like Miami, California, New York, etc is evident. Latin American Spanish borrows many English terms which are used by large Spanish-speaking communities. However, you will find some equivalent terms used in Spain as well.

Also, differences include words’ spellings. For example, the word cost is translated as ‘coste’ in Spain and ‘costo’ in Latin America. This Work is intended to provide a 21st century legal reference, which is required for a better understanding of the transactions conducted between nations. Translators, lawyers, paralegals, investors, managers, and law students should have this type of reference.